1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of three-dimensional (3-D) solid modeling for mechanical engineers/designers. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a system and method accessing computer applications and servers to manage distributed processing related to 3-D solid modeling for mechanical engineers/designers.
2. Description of the Related Art
The visualization of three-dimensional objects on a computer screen has enabled designers to model real world physical objects without the need to actually create the object. Using the enhanced computer graphics capabilities of current computers, designers can model an increasing variety of objects in various circumstances. For example, mechanical engineers in the automotive and aeronautical engineering disciplines can model discrete parts, collections of parts or whole assemblies on the computer. Physical testing and many other performance models can also be modeled and visualized prior to the actual creation of the part, thereby saving significant production and experimentation costs.
Current solid modeling products are individual-productivity applications, focusing on individual engineers using, for example, standalone Windows NT or UNIX workstations rather than high-bandwidth distributed networks. Such programs focus on facilitating the three-dimensional visualization of solid models, complex mathematical geometry and constraint calculations, and also provide for consistent storage of this type of data for recurring use involving creation and change. To do this, applications must be able to accept input, validate input, construct data or make changes, use input to perform changes on the existing data model, and then display that model. In conventional computing platforms, this is all accomplished using one machine, e.g., a standalone workstation, with the participants using the application directly. The distinction between visualization, internal calculations and storage of data is intertwined and, for performance reasons, has heretofore been considered to be best practice.
Due in part to the constraints of these prior computing platforms, existing solid modeling programs have few features and limited support for team or collaborative activities. Thus, supporting engineering team collaboration in the design and manufacturing process and effectively managing changes has been virtually impossible.
Further, current computer aided design (CAD) systems require a large internal corporate infrastructure to support the hardware, software and networks required for such a system to function properly. If a company requires interaction with outside suppliers or clients, an even larger commitment to corporate infrastructure is required to deal with the many additional complexities to network with an external entity.
Several technological advances, such as the proliferation of inexpensive PCs, the acceptance of TCP/IP as an universal communications standard, fast routers and the increase in bandwidth of Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ASDL) technology and cable modems, have now made high-bandwidth distributed networks, such as the Internet, a viable computing platform. The development of a program that takes advantage of these improvements on the Internet or within an intranet offers not only a more effective way to provide access to applications and data, but also facilitates more robust processing and computations by efficiently distributing those activities to the devices and servers best suited for those tasks. Further, the effective use of the Internet/intranet as a computing platform diminishes the necessity for companies to maintain large complex corporate infrastructures by clearing the way for outsourcing of those activities to service providers.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to facilitate three-dimensional modeling in a pervasive computing environment.
The present invention provides a method and system for three-dimensional solid modeling for mechanical engineers/designers in a distributed processing high-bandwidth network. The platform has essentially three components: the design application, the design server and the repository server. These components are all preferably coordinated by an administrative server. In preferred embodiments, the design application is resident on each user""s local machine, the design server and repository server can be on one machine, the design and repository servers can each be on respective individual machines, or multiple instances of each may be on many machines. The configuration of components is primarily driven by user needs and related tasks. Thus, the present invention will be seen to 1) provide increased processing efficiencies by directing specific processing tasks to the machine or machines best suited for those tasks; and 2) provide increased options for corporate infrastructure investment by allowing the outsourcing of any or all of the components of the platform and their maintenance.
According to a preferred embodiment of the method of the present invention, an input, such as a change request, is entered in the design application. That input is validated by the design application to determine if it: is a well-formed request. If a well-formed change request, that request is submitted to the design server. The design server performs the change and reports the results of the change back to the design application. If successful, the design application updates the information it stores locally and provides a visual representation of the results of the changes to the user. In this example, the design application makes the determination of what it needs from the server to subsequently display to the user. However, the present invention preferably takes advantage of the resources of multiple machines while prior art is restricted to the bandwidth of a single system.
A more complete appreciation of the present invention and the scope thereof can be obtained from the accompanying drawings which are briefly summarized below, the following detailed description of the presently-preferred embodiments of the invention, and the appended claims.